This invention relates to a cylinder head gasket with a gasket ring made from a soft material and having at least one sealing passage, which is bounded in roughly aligned manner by a metallic sealing element having the axial thickness of the soft material. On the outer circumference of the sealing element, several roughly radially projecting projections are positionally fixed in the soft material.
Such a cylinder head gasket is known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,565,449. The metallic sealing element disclosed by this patent comprises an annular element with a circular, solid profile, which is held by a U-shaped, profiled sheet metal ring. On the outer circumference of the sheet metal ring are provided radially outwardly projecting projections, which fix the sealing element in position on the soft material. However, a multipart sealing element of this type is technically complicated and therefore expensive to manufacture. If different metals are used for the annular sealing element and the surrounding U-shaped sheet metal ring, there can also be increased corrosion at the contact points. Particularly in connection with high quality requirements for cylinder head gaskets used in internal combustion engines, it is difficult to initially check the quality of the gasket components and then subsequently the gasket as a fitted member.
Obviously, on reducing the number of components, there is a reduction in the assembly expenditure with respect to the cylinder gasket head manufacture. In an assembly including a known cylinder head gasket with a U-shaped sheet metal ring, tolerance problems can also occur with respect to the material thickness of the complete flat gasket, particularly in the vicinity of the projections.